Dear Parents, assalam-o-alaikum
At Huda, we have chosen to use the Stanford Achievement Test. It’s the oldest and most widely used of a half dozen or so nation-wide standardized tests, which virtually all do the same thing. ITBS, CAT, Terra Nova or Stanford all give us an idea of how our students are scoring in comparison to students throughout the entire country. Though each test is slightly different in its approach, no test is ideal and all contain bias elements, especially regarding particular curricula and methodologies.

Though we have chosen to use the Stanford, it does have certain weaknesses in regards to our curriculum. For example in grades KG- 2, the test is administered orally by the teacher, and the children are not provided a written copy of the test questions. This limits the use of the strategies and clues they’ve been taught to use regarding how to tackle math word problems and reading comprehension. This skews the test results against our children doing as well as they could if they were given the questions in writing. It really ends up being a listening test rather than a true math test. For reasons like this and more, we have to realize that the test scores are only one indicator of a school or child’s success, and at times the scores reflect a limitation in the testing, not the student’s lack of ability or skills, or the quality of the curriculum.

Conversely, 3rd grade onward, students are given the test booklet, general directions are given, and the students read the test questions themselves, moving through the test at their own pace, independently. So beginning in third grade, children who lose focus or have trouble with reading comprehension or math word problems may find the test much more difficult than in previous years. Standardized testing is one useful tool to further assess the school’s programs as well as individual students, but not an accurate assessment to try to evaluate the value of a program, a teacher, or a student’s learning based solely on one test that may be affected by many variables. One use of the test is if we find that across the board our test scores are lower than we would like in a particular subject area, we may examine new curricula from several publishers to see if a change is in order.

Also we want to be careful because test results can be misinterpreted or invalid conclusions drawn from them. Interpreting scores takes some knowledge of scaling.

If you do have other questions, please feel free to contact us at 501-565-3555 or email us at business@hudaacademy.org